Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar is the largest of the Sahyadri hill stations and, at 1,353 metres, the coolest place within easy reach of Mumbai and Pune. The British made it the summer capital of the Bombay Presidency in 1828 and left the plan you still walk: a mall road, a club, a stone church and a ring of viewpoints named after governors and their wives. But the older town, Old Mahabaleshwar, is a temple village where five streams are said to rise from the mouth of a stone cow in the Panchganga temple, among them the Krishna, which runs 1,400 kilometres to the Bay of Bengal from that small dark room.

Days here belong to the edge. Arthur's Seat looks straight down some six hundred metres into the Savitri valley, with the bare Konkan side on one hand and the wooded Deccan on the other; Wilson Point catches the sunrise; Lingmala Falls drops in two stages after rain. Pratapgad, twenty-four kilometres away by a road of hairpins, is the fort where Shivaji killed Afzal Khan in 1659.

The plateau is also India's strawberry capital, and from December to March roadside stalls sell them by the basket with cream. The monsoon brings close to six metres of rain and shuts much of the town, glorious if you like weather and useless for views.